Tuesday, August 22, 2017

Zerohedge helped Salil Mehta get his email, blog, and other accounts back after they were vanished by Google.

Yesterday we reported that in a shocking, and unexplained move, statistics professor Salil Mehta, adjunct professor at Columbia and Georgetown who teaches probability and data science and whose work has appeared on this website on numerous prior occasions, had been banned by Google on Friday, with his email, blog and other Google-linked accounts wiped clean and no longer accessible.

As we discussed yesterday, it was not clear what Salil did to provoke Google:

On Friday afternoon East Coast Time by surprise, I was completely shut down in all my Google accounts (all of my gmail accounts, blog, all of my university pages that were on google sites, etc.) for no reason and no warning. A number of us were stunned and unsure, but clearly we know at this point it wasn’t an accident.

As Salil explained, he had never engaged in political discourse, and his content was purely math/statistics-focused: "My background is clean, and without a political or social agenda. I am not promoting any specific viewpoint. I teach probability math and that’s it. Have worked with both the Obama administration and advised on polling statistics for the Trump campaign, am an adjunct professor at three top universities, an editor of the peer-reviewed journal of the American Statistical Association, and wrote a best-selling statistics book (all the proceeds of which I gave to charity!)"

And yet, Salil's attempts to get to the bottom of his purge were fruitless:

I have followed their common “appeal” form but no response for three days. Also connected with one of the VPs over the weekend and it still takes time until receiving this today! Just more of a reflection of how cold a company can treat someone very poorly: without any information, and lack of ability to move forward in their life (can I get real reasons if any, can I get advance notice, can I get my contact list back from gmail, and why are university properties unrelated to my blog shut down?)

We are going to be looking back on this time in Google’s history and those of other social media and know that they have done some very immoral and confusing things, and it has hurt their public reputation with decent people who wanted to grow into the next future with them.

Until yesterday, Google's only response was a generic form statement it issues to every account that is "in violation of its Terms of Service." That changed yesterday, because after our article detailing Salil's plight went viral, and was read 300,000 times, Google responded and as of this morning, has restored all of Salil Metha's accounts.

That's great and all, but the irony of someone being unvanished because he did NOT engage in any Constitutionally-protected political free speech is sizable indeed. Most people are not going to have the online might of Zerohedge behind them, or happen to be a politically unblemished minority professor who worked with the Obama administration, which means that most of us are beholden to the goodwill and commitment to Internet neutrality of the various social media giants.

Since these corporations are heavily converged, since SJWs always double down, and since the executives who are not themselves SJWs have repeatedly shown themselves to be too weak to stand up to much direct pressure from their internal SJWs, it is imperative that everyone who is to the right of Salil Metha have a backup plan already in place and already implemented starting right now. That means everything from email addresses, websites, and payment processors to ISPs and domain registry alternatives.

If you want to be accessible by our rapid response program and you are not VFM, you have four alternatives.

Follow me on Twitter. This is the least preferable option since I anticipate a massive, multiplatform strike will be the next step after the surgical deplatformings and demonetizations prove ineffective. I am reliably informed that SJWs inside Twitter, Google, Facebook, and Paypal are already putting this plan together and are now working on figuring out how to sell it to the decision-makers at their respective corporations. Saner heads may prevail, in fact, they probably will prevail at Google and Paypal, since the executives there understand that further fracturing the Internet is not good for their future growth, but there are no guarantees, and as we know from our experience with Amazon, even a rogue strike or two by employees acting without permission or approval cannot be ruled out.

Follow me on Gab. This is safe, but not necessarily timely, particularly if you're not already actively using Gab.

Sign up for the Book Club. You'll get 1-3 book announcements per month. This is the least disruptive option that ensures you are rapidly contacted.

Sign up for the Daily Meme Wars. You'll get six emails per week, five with the Meme of the Day, and the sixth containing a summary and a poll to vote in the meme of the week. This is the option I'd prefer people to select, because #DailyMemeWars has proven to be increasingly effective social media artillery.

You can, of course, do any combination of these or all four if you see fit. But the important thing is to do at least one of them. And remember, you can always reach me at my infogalactic email if my gmail address is vanished.

119 Comments:

Dumping Google is hard, but doable. Get your email off Gmail ASAP, it's a linchpin that's difficult to recover from if they kill it. Blog is next. I just migrated and shut down a Google for Business account because of the owner of the account reading the writing on the wall. Don't give the SJWs another cent, exit now.

Glad Mehta's un-unpersoned, but it'd be nice to know how and why it happened and then un-happened.

Mehta insists on Twitter that he "doesn't carry any grievance against any part of Google," and that he has "no intention of further comments." Less prominent people don't have his ability to fight back so well, and need help, too.

He seems content to take his "victory" and allow any other Google victims to fend for themselves.

This will become more common, because they've hired rooms full of SJWs to police content, and apparently given them carte blanche to close accounts. There may be some sort of oversight system where a low-level drone has to get a manager's sign-off to do what this one did, but if the manager is an SJW, that's not a problem. And how many low-level drones will trash accounts now and then for something offensive without the proper authorization, figuring most people will never make through Google's automated >/dev/null customer service system, so it will never come back to bite them?

Be diversified. Have multiple accounts in multiple places. If you're uploading content, from blog posts to videos, upload them to multiple services, including small ones that a purge may not take into account. (I've been thinking about the feasibility of running a blog on pastebin sites.) Spread things around. Have backups of everything you care about, preferably at your own location, not in the cloud. Have a plan to restore them. Think about how quickly you need to be able to do that: are you a popular hub that needs to be able to spin back up at a new location within hours, or would it be fine to drop your friends a "experiencing technical difficulties" email and be back up in a week? Know what content is most critical to get back up first. Have multiple emails (and/or phone numbers and postal addresses) for your most important contacts, so if they get purged, you still have ways to reach them.

-There are several cloud providers out there. experimenting with Owncloud. It works, could use a little polishing but functional for attaching mobile devices, PC's etc to a common cloud. On that note you can download your entire google archive and then store it locally or move it to a cloud service like Owncloud.

if anyone has suggestions for other good cloud providers I'm open to suggestions.

Download your google data (note the quantity of data can be substantial):https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3024190?hl=en

This is that network analysis of the "Alt-Right" that cropped up a few months ago. The important parts is that they've now attacked everyone on that list, even tangentially, and that VD never shows up. The first makes sense, as that was the reason it was produced. The second seems to be because it's more of the Identitarian groups.

There's a chance VD gets missed in the purges, but we'll see.

The main thing for a lot of people here: get in touch with your Churches. And then the Elders. Get discussing the fact that they're coming for *you* next. It's time to start moving now.

A statistician specializing in electoral analysis suddenly gets un-personed by Google? Makes you wonder if he may have been involved in ongoing analysis of the "anomalous" voting patterns that have been brought to light recently as evidence for ongoing systemic Democrat vote fraud.

I looked through that intel report a little closer. I see now why VD got missed, mostly. Most of the work was done when he was off Twitter, and he doesn't YouTube. Hilariously enough, Judeo-Christ gets a few more mentions.

Looking GlassThe main thing for a lot of people here: get in touch with your Churches. And then the Elders. Get discussing the fact that they're coming for *you* next.

That's worth a try, but most church leaders won't understand what you are talking about. Try convincing them that only members should use the church for a marriage, they won't even understand that issue. It's going to take some real pain before church leaders over 50 begin to see what's going on around them.

Anyone else think these "mistakes" where normal, respectable, semi-prominent figures have their Google accounts temporarily shuttered by "accident" to normalize people to the idea of this being a regular occurrence. Same thing happened to Jordan Peterson recently, and it struck me that these incidents of people receiving access back quickly are preparation for something bigger and longer term.

Google is doing me a favor. I knew I should be getting off that system (still looking at finding a different OS for my phone, RIP cyanogen mod) and this pushed me to do it. It's laborious to switch all my billing and subscription emails, but the impetus is now there.

The "free, as long as we snoop you and deluge you with ads" model has IMO reached apogee, with nowhere to go but down. Tech is simply too cheap, as is content. The "price" of free is now obviously too high for some, and the ranks of "some" seem likely to swell in a tsunami.

This is fascinating. Phil Zimmerman barely escaped prison when he crafted PGP (appropriating RSA in the process) and it (ahem) somehow made it into the Internet Wilds in violation of munitions export law back in, what? 1992?

For decades, people have paid zero attention to privacy of their mails. The sanctity of mail used to be a Heap Big Deal as was the position of Postmaster. I guess the rise of our Sheep Phase meant little care was given to living in a glass tank.

Google is giving us the nudge not even all the revelations about NSA domestic spying offered.

This is that network analysis of the "Alt-Right" that cropped up a few months ago. The important parts is that they've now attacked everyone on that list, even tangentially, and that VD never shows up. The first makes sense, as that was the reason it was produced. The second seems to be because it's more of the Identitarian groups.

There's a chance VD gets missed in the purges, but we'll see.

The main thing for a lot of people here: get in touch with your Churches. And then the Elders. Get discussing the fact that they're coming for *you* next. It's time to start moving now.

It dawns on me that their research is rather flawed and they don't even realize it. "Alt-right.com" is not the alt-right but if they are simply doing word association then it will always show up larger because it's "alt-right.com". I'm guessing they are not doing any kind of semiotic analysis.

Have you tried to setup PGP chains? Encrypted email is a pain to get running in a lot of ways. https://www.softwar.net/index.html is a place for some solid crypto tools, if you need them.

I think the big issue is something that Snowden highlighted. My feelings on Snowden is that he would be a traitor except X-Keyscore exists. Digital tech took 40 years to finally be able to capture all traffic. Almost the entire Internet Infrastructure was built on the "really expensive to store things" model. That's changed, and it's going to take time for things to change.

Most of the tech you would want exists, it's just currently very expensive. That'll change over time.

"...who teaches probability and data science and whose work has appeared on this website on numerous prior occasions..."Welp found the reason for the vanishing. Zerohedge may have rubbed a few SJWs' feefees the wrong way, thus putting a bullseye target on anyone who has contributed in any way to any post on the site, ever-no matter how benign, and regardless of prior political associations.There certainly are ore than a few SJWs who stay up late doing their homework, fwiw.I could be wrong, of course.

Its interesting that multiple US war ships have suddenly seemed to forget how to sail, running aground, colliding with some of the largest ships on the ocean.....Sounds like someone has been testing some shiny new electronic warfare tools on the US naval fleet. That could be a nasty surprise.

I'm no naval expert so perhaps I'm way off but it seems the US navy suddenly forgot how to sail even with all of their fancy system or someone has some fun electronic warfare toys that could make the US navy have a very bad day.

PGP isnt that bad, with current tools its reasonable to use. The problem is behavioral, people are too accustomed to high trust communications. PGP implementation really just needs a little UI streamlining and people must shift to "low trust" communications expectations

The Fitz appears to be a straight up collapse in operational ability by the entire command staff. The rest are more suspicious. Or the Fitz was targeted because of that reason, so it's hard to sort out.

It could just be an over-extension issue merged with the Social Justice push, which is going to take a couple of years to undo, or someone is using some new tech weapons. It was Daylight and you got T-boned by a Super Tanker. That takes some real skill to not have anyone with binoculars.

The Fitz appears to be a straight up collapse in operational ability by the entire command staff. The rest are more suspicious. Or the Fitz was targeted because of that reason, so it's hard to sort out.

It could just be an over-extension issue merged with the Social Justice push, which is going to take a couple of years to undo, or someone is using some new tech weapons. It was Daylight and you got T-boned by a Super Tanker. That takes some real skill to not have anyone with binoculars.

They were probably too busy taking turns sitting down to pee while wearing high heels.

I would suspect we are seeing the natural result of an 8 year campaign to converge the US military. Many people were promoted past their competence in order to further the narrative.

The Fitz appears to be a straight up collapse in operational ability by the entire command staff. The rest are more suspicious. Or the Fitz was targeted because of that reason, so it's hard to sort out.

It could just be an over-extension issue merged with the Social Justice push, which is going to take a couple of years to undo, or someone is using some new tech weapons. It was Daylight and you got T-boned by a Super Tanker. That takes some real skill to not have anyone with binoculars.

Binoculars? Working eyeballs would do just fine. Arleigh Burke class destroyers are very fast and nimble; if they were under power and had a couple hundred yards worth of warning they could've easily gotten out of the way. Even at night I doubt seamen on watch would even need NVGs to spot a giant tanker within a mile or so most of the time.

I'm suspicious that something is causing the ships to lose power so they can't react. Total incompetence is not out of the question, but who knows, I'm not a sailor and never was.

Partially. It's that the good ones left. Realize who most of Trump's Military-types around him are? 3 Star Generals that couldn't get their 4th because they were White Men.

Speaking of Unpersoning: https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2017/08/22/treasury-secretary-mnuchin-targets-china-russia-entities-for-dprk-support/ The Donald is smacking China around. The Alt-Left would need Wisdom to realize he's actually using a lot of their tactics in this regard, but Trump knows what he is doing.

If you're 'out and about' and run across folks asking about where to find non MSM sources, contribute a few minutes to Alt Tech: post something like this:-------------Come to the Dark Side!

Gab.ai -- Alt Tech replacement for Twitter. Free Speech!

Infogalactic.com -- the Alt Tech replacement for heavily heavily censored Wikipedia (there are plug-ins for most browsers, so search answers linked to Wikipedia are diverted to Infogalactic: the planetary information hub!

News.infogalactic.com -- Alt Tech replacement for Drudge

Tech.infogalactic.com -- working on being the Alt Tech replacement for completely cucked Wired magazine.------------------------

I just did here: http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/08/camping-world-tells-trump-supporters-shop-elsewhere-nascar-legend-mark-martin-cancels-150k-order/

There are lots of maybe's but I dont think its likely to be just operational degradation. There was also the hubbub about the the USS Donald S. Cook April 12, 2015 encounter with the Russian jet and subsequent return to port in the black sea.

It takes effort to get run over by some of the largest ships on the sea. They dont move that fast and can be seen for miles.

@39. roughcoat, can confirm. Even from the sail of a submarine (18-30 feet above the waterline approximately) you can see things like tankers for a bare minimum of eight miles at night with no magnification. I'd actually argue that it's easier to see things at night because of the running lights.

NVGs? They wouldn't even give you NVGs on lookout. Never, in my experience. It's beyond unnecessary. The only time they might even consider it is in a (totally barbaric) area that routinely has ships with no running lights out at night (#whattheactualf***/#suicidewatch/#epicdeathwish) which I don't even know if exists outside of maybe some kind of piracy.

The only times you're gonna have issues is with reduced visibility conditions, such as heavy fog or very rough stormy weather.

There's also the chance that since they know he has moles in all the big tech co's, they're playing it smart and leaving him alone .... for now ....

Vox is, as he implied in one of his recent 'scopes, pretty SJW-proof "because they know he'll burn them to the ground (metaphorically .... for now ....) if they trespass on his stuff. Supreme Dark Lord, indeed!

Peterson and Mehta are both respected academicians and not even remotely "extremist" - so, what is motivating Google to de-platform them?

They're also well known and well connected - which means a lot of people are going to hear about it.

On the surface, all this seems to be accomplishing is making Google look fickle and untrustworthy. There's no up side to it for them that I can see, which strongly suggests something's going on that we're not aware of.

It's not difficult to register a domain and just set up your own email address for your own purposes, costs $150/year, but perhaps all the registrars are converged.

Over the past month, eight trucks have been stolen in an area north of me (these still exist) where high-trust remains. All eight were unlocked and had the keys in the ignition and the locals were utterly shocked with the crime. As on the web, high-trust will not endure in this little slice of heaven and all will be forced to adapt.

@Grayman: The USS Donald S Cook didn't run because of the Russian Jet. It ran when the Russians lit it up with the targeting radar of a Bastion coastal defense missile battery. The ship's captain decided the better part of valor lay in being far far away from Crimea.

RC wrote:Over the past month, eight trucks have been stolen in an area north of me (these still exist) where high-trust remains. All eight were unlocked and had the keys in the ignition and the locals were utterly shocked with the crime. As on the web, high-trust will not endure in this little slice of heaven and all will be forced to adapt.

I've seen that happen as well, in an area that began importing Africans back in the mid-90's. Watching that kind of community trust, that has been built up and existed for generations, die within a few years is both an incredible red pill and saddening.

Peterson and Mehta are both respected academicians and not even remotely "extremist" - so, what is motivating Google to de-platform them?

They're also well known and well connected - which means a lot of people are going to hear about it.

On the surface, all this seems to be accomplishing is making Google look fickle and untrustworthy. There's no up side to it for them that I can see, which strongly suggests something's going on that we're not aware of.

Exactly, as I mentioned upthread something seems off. My thought is that it's being done for the purpose of normalizing the behaviour in the minds of the public. Because it appears to happen almost without reason or purpose, we can never truly know whether it's a deliberate measure or just an accident based on some AI flag or a technical glitch. People see someone get vanished and then unvanished a day later, they're going to start to see it as normal. Then when people stop getting accounts reinstated, it's not going to stand out in their minds; either they'll keep waiting for it to happen or they'll just stop thinking about it. Some people will just think "Oh this is obviously a mistake, it will be fixed sooner or later", and let Google or others off the hook.

At least that's the only explanation that makes sense to me; I'm more than interested in hearing any other theories about why this appears to be a trend when it comes to a high-visibility, slightly controversial figures.

Regarding the recent destroyer "accidents". GPS spoofing only goes so far, it does not work on navigational radar nor on the topside watchstanders. However. Autopilot is a computer, computers can be hacked. If programmatically the autopilot is hacked it could suddenly turn the ship right into the path of another vessel. It controls speed and direction so commands the rudder and the screws.

In the sub force we used to keep the autopilot turned off and the power circuits disconnected and tagged out on the power panels in IC alley. It was never trusted and never used. But the skimmers (surface fleet) - who knows what they do. Hacking the autopilot including turning it on programmatically and having it steer the ship into danger -- the crew would first not know what was happening nor the cause. If discovered someone would have to run to the correct power panel and throw the correct unlabelled switch (might be one, might be three) to disconnect it and regain helm control. I suspect there is no training for that, and can believe that no one on the bridge even knows where the power disconnect is.

"Google" probably isn't. It's not like there was a high-up meeting at Google where it was decided to delete these individuals, or even to go after a particular class of offender. In most of these cases, an offended SJW happens to have an SJW friend at a social media company, so she makes a call, and the friend bans the offender. I don't think the left hand has any idea what the right hand is doing at these places anymore, because they've brought in so many monitors to handle complaints, and many are SJWs. They also typically have no procedure to appeal bans, at least nothing concrete that connects you to a real person or lets you face your accuser, so they don't have to fear reprisal unless they happen to pick on someone prominent enough to bring a lot of attention to it. So the SJWs can get away with petty bans 99% of the time, and they get off on it, so they do it.

I've never signed up for paypal for that reason and got off Google too, but this isn't even recent. I think paypalwarning.com is over 10 years old and they were randomly disappearing accounts and you had to fax a utility bill, passport, etc. at 2am when it was turned on to get the account unlocked, and there was a big effort to find the well hidden contact number.Google when it added everyone on YouTube to Google+ ended up afoul of their "real names policy" and started locking and disappearing accounts. That was 2 or 3 years ago, or was it longer?

Lesson: first, if you aren't out to deplatform and it takes positive effort (e.g. a child pornogropher) it is unlikely to be done accidentally. second, have an appeals path that is likely to be seen by someone who can do something quickly.

Before it happened "accidentally". Now it has been weaponized.

Gab.ai has that and the alt-tech will have to keep that idea even as it gets big.

Because it appears to happen almost without reason or purpose, we can never truly know whether it's a deliberate measure or just an accident based on some AI flag or a technical glitch.

Good point. We're never told who actually did it or why or how, so normies will buy the accident excuse rather than believe their social media is turning on them.

When dozens of unrelated Catholic groups and pages on Facebook went missing recently, and were later given the "technical glitch" excuse, most people didn't have the know-how to realize how unlikely that was. And if you suspect, what can you do? You stay or you go.

Enom doesn't seem to give a shit what content is up on the domains registered with them so I don't think that's an immediate concern. I'm not that big a fan of Enom because their customer service is mediocre, or it was a couple years ago.

The CEO of easyDNS is a self-described free speech absolutist who has warned about the dangers of the web middlemen censoring speech, so that's the company I'll probably use from now on unless some enterprising Alt-Tech type starts a domain registration company.

Enom doesn't seem to give a shit what content is up on the domains registered with them so I don't think that's an immediate concern. I'm not that big a fan of Enom because their customer service is mediocre, or it was a couple years ago.

The CEO of easyDNS is a self-described free speech absolutist who has warned about the dangers of the web middlemen censoring speech, so that's the company I'll probably use from now on unless some enterprising Alt-Tech type starts a domain registration company.

Ah, whoops. It's Castalia House with Enom. I don't know anything about the registrar Infogalactic is on.

Here's a thought WRT the Navy's recent problems:Remember the Prius hacks where someone took remote control of the car? Gee-whiz-bang high tech has been a winner in .mil procurement for...how long? Then again, maybe it's just a Blue Screen of Death on the computer doing the steering.... G-D Windows ME.

WRT un-un-un-unplatforming people, if it is occurring due to SJ-Warriors, Cubicle Theater of Warfare Division, imagine that FIRING such people is all but certain to generate 1) VERY bad publicity and 2) almost certainly lawsuits.

It's difficult enough for most large organizations to can overly incompetent CSR's. Imagine a cubicle farm full of chartreuse-, mauve- and iridescent blue-haired fatties (men, women, and N/A) sifting everything with a Mandate From SJW-GOD.

Cail Corishev: "Google" probably isn't. It's not like there was a high-up meeting at Google where it was decided to delete these individuals, or even to go after a particular class of offender. In most of these cases, an offended SJW happens to have an SJW friend at a social media company, so she makes a call, and the friend bans the offender.

That makes a lot of sense. In that case, Google should be motivated to lock that nonsense down, though maybe it's too late now. Vox said on a Darkstream the other night that these big tech companies survive on the margin. If appreciable numbers of people start jumping ship because of uncontrolled SJW shenanigans, then that could hurt their longterm survival.

Vox has already said this many times, but this latest Google nonsense just emphasizes the absolute necessity of NOT letting SJWs into your organization; they're cancer.

@StickwickI think it os much more serious than just normalizing a behaviour. The sudden and unexplained deplatforming of academics serves as a warning to everyone else: "toe the line or you will be thrown down the memory hole as well".

Frankly, even MiniTrue does not have the human or AI resources to deplatform everyone who might engage in wrongthink, but if enough people get the message and start self censoring or putting themselves on the Internet altogether, then half the work is already done at little or no cost to the SJWs.

While we absolutely need to move to alternative platforms, there needs to be work own both truly alternative tech solutions (mesh networks and the like) to prevent traffic from being seen or censored by the Progressives, and going to totally alternative modes of communication they can't control. Think of Soviet era Samizdat or even snail mail. Vox's meme attacks work when spread via street art, bumper stickers placed in public spaces (or put on a car with an Obama or Hillary sticker!), once again, places they can't look into or go.

I'm sure much smarter people an think of better avenues of approach, but realistically we need to become the "small furry mammals" and start moving into the ecological niches the dinosaurs haven't occupied, and then start nibbling at any exposed surfaces they leave out for us.

@66 Stickwick. If appreciable numbers of people start jumping ship because of uncontrolled SJW shenanigans, then that could hurt their longterm survival.

Google is becoming unreliable as a service. That means science and engineering researchers should not trust Google+ to safely retain data, analysis, documents, etc. Faculty should guide their graduate students to other, more reliable, repositories. Because Google cannot be trusted to do its job now that it has become a playground for Social Justice Warriors.

Those in academia or associated with academics should pass this along, regretfully, not in anger but rather as a sad necessity.

Any thoughts on Amazon? I imagine a lot of you are voracious readers like me, and your purchases probably reflect a certain degree of thoughtcrime. I'd be very surprised if THEY are not already using Amazon to profile people based on what books they buy.

Kyle Searle wrote:@Looking Glass: laughing at the programming skillz on display. "We tried to load a 4 GB JSON file into memory but it was too big. So we went to CSV." Completely inept.… except that the most widespread JSON parsing libraries don't have a streaming interface. The dumbassed part was the preceding step, when they converted data that had been supplied to them as a Postgres database into a single flat file.

This was YouTube videos, but Christian Post got mass demonetized. The purge continues apace. There definitely seems to be a paid group that's going around flagging everyone. Though YouTube's demonetization issue is, technically, different. They want all non-HGTV content gone.

For VD (or others who might know): Do you know anything about zensurfrei.com, an outfit which says it does censorship-free webhosting? Would it be a good site to move a domain registration to and have as a webhost?

This was YouTube videos, but Christian Post got mass demonetized. The purge continues apace. There definitely seems to be a paid group that's going around flagging everyone. Though YouTube's demonetization issue is, technically, different. They want all non-HGTV content gone.

YouTube is hemorrhaging money and advertisers are leaving in droves effecting even videos with no "Right" content at all . Its called adpocalypse over there

The economic smart play is to just dump YouTube entirely but this would piss off enough people they might start dropping other Google products

That said it could be fixed with a smarter algorithm that sorted content , Right wing adds on some things, Left on others

Problem is even if they could get it past the political idiots convergence makes you stupid and there is no guarantee anyone would trust them

I suspect though as the bunko economy continues to implode, ads in general will become less effective. I have no idea how content or communications is going to be paid for sans advertising but given we need mass media like we need smallpox it won't be a bad thing to find out

An internet where people pay a modest fee for their own blog either as promotion for something else or just for fun so long as there are enough service providers to keep it open will be smaller but better

eventually replacing most things where possible with open source is also going to be a good thing though an open source, volunteer driven economy will be deeply strange . It won't be Left or Right exactly but more tribal. Needless to say scale junkies will hate it.

Really?! You of all people, saying that? When the fuck has "demonstrably and provably neutral" ever stopped Leftists from anything? Next thing you know, you'll be telling us that they obey facts and listen to reason.

Just curious. You believe that the internet infrastructure itself sufficiently neutral that you can maintain connectivity if actively opposed?

It all depends upon how deep you want to go. At this point, the USA is just as at risk of the rest of the world cutting it off. China and Turkey already have their own internets; the concept is called Internet Sovereignty.

Every nation should have independent authority over its own Internet, Chinese President Xi Jinping said Wednesday, telling a government-organised conference that "freedom and order" are both necessary in cyberspace.

The tech giants are playing into China's hands with these games. Once you concede the need for control, you have no argument against national Internet sovereignty.

Really?! You of all people, saying that? When the fuck has "demonstrably and provably neutral" ever stopped Leftists from anything? Next thing you know, you'll be telling us that they obey facts and listen to reason.

Okay, I'll try to type more slowly. Why do you think they see Infogalactic as an enemy at all? Do you really think that they LIKE the way Wikipedia screws them over and denies them any ability to set the record straight? Remember, Wikipedia HATES corporations and will not let them even create their own pages there.

So, Infogalactic is better for them too. That's the beauty of the choose-your-perspective design, and even the SJW reporters can see that.

If they're going to burn down a company simply because I'm a designer, they'll have to go after all sorts of companies, from Sega on down.

Correct, I do know about the Adpocalpyse, however Christian Post hadn't gotten touched. Until the other day. That's a *very* mainstream Christian channel, which means they're proceeding apace with their drive to be a bland as possible TV channel website. (Just with 100 million other views.)

As for their model, the Ad-supported Model doesn't work for Video. Video is too expensive. (Processing, Storage & Bandwidth) People have to pay, but YouTube gives high-quality for "free". That free has cost Google between 5 and 15 billion USD over the last decade. [No one wants to point out that the entire project is an Anti-Trust Violation.]

That network analysis of the alt right is something notable. Such analyses given the right data can figure out who are the main influncees and leutenants in a movement. Even if they are behind the scenes not public. So on the outside they'd lookclean of bad think.

He seems content to take his "victory" and allow any other Google victims to fend for themselves.

We often talk about IQ and the fate of nations around here, which is all well and good, but the ability to stand on principle seems to be a Western special. A Western intellectual so maligned would at least give lip service to the idea that it shouldn't happen again to other people.

So while the alt-lite is fine with immigration as long as its from high IQ people, I say no. I don't care how much of a genius someone is, if they don't share my values they shouldn't be in my community.

Kyle Beach drove from Los Angeles to hear “truth” from Trump. He wore a shirt bearing an image of Seth Rich and said he wants to know more about what happened to the man in the center of the conspiracy theory regarding the leaks of emails from the Democratic National Committee during last year’s presidential race.

“President Trump is the only one who speaks the truth, he’s the only one who tells it like it is, and that’s the most important thing to me,” said Beach, 29, a designer. “I want to know what happened with Seth Rich … and I want to know why the media framed Russia.”

RC wrote:It's not difficult to register a domain and just set up your own email address for your own purposes, costs $150/year, but perhaps all the registrars are converged.Yeah, I did that years ago. I always figured that if someone offers me a "free" service, then I don't have a right to expect much from them. TAANSTAFL, and all that. Unfortunately, the web hosting service and mail provider I chose was GoDaddy. (This was at least 15 years ago.) And I'm paid up for the next four years. So even the best laid plans...

How about we begin the de-googling purification with this blog? I run in very tight security mode with my browser--AdBlock on, of course, and NoScript active. Before I can comment on these pages, I have to allow content from Google.com. This leads me to conclude that this blog uses scripts that originate from their servers.

@92. ace, "So while the alt-lite is fine with immigration as long as its from high IQ people, I say no. I don't care how much of a genius someone is, if they don't share my values they shouldn't be in my community."

Ding Ding Ding!

This is exactly why. If not for this, there'd be no problem with the Chinese/Jews/Brahmin rolling in. It's not the intelligence that's the entire problem. It's a combination of intelligence and standards/preferences/norms/morals, and they are all important.

Ive been using Fastmail for my emails - for over a decade. They provide a great service. Regarding phones: you can still pick up Blackberry Z10s that are synced for your cell carrier ..for under $300. I'm on my second. You forego the use of most apps....but on the positive side - no apps makes your phone even more secure. However if you want something newer, BB just came out with new one that runs on an Android platform. Not sure if its riddled with impossible to remove Google stuff ..or not.As mentioned here before, a good alternative for web surfing is Startpage. Another great product that I've been with great results for over a decade. Combined with a good VPN like Private Internet Access your internet tracks are pretty much eliminated.

Well, my email transfer from Google to my new provider is just about done. Should've done this years ago but these increasingly frequent stories of account lockouts are too much. I know they won't miss my little account, but it still feels good to finally leave them behind.

There is a solution to all of this. The common claim for most of this nonsense is that they don't want their service used to commit crimes. However, it is obvious that many, especially are used for criminal purposes (most notably Twitter and flash-mobbing of stores).

These companies don't seem to have taken into account that once they start inspecting and policing content, they become liable for ALL content on their particular company's service.

The way to stop them is to file criminal complaints every time they fail to stop their service from being used as part of criminal activity. Once they keep getting dragged into criminal court over these cases ( and then civil court for damages), they will run to the FCC and EMAND protection.

The only way to get the necessary protection from the above is to have common carrier status. This indemnified the company, but also PROHIBITS discriminating among user activity on the basis of content or perceived motive.

Example: the phone company can't be charged for partaking in a crime just because a criminal conspiracy was planned using their equipment. This not only absolves, but indeed PROHIBITS the phone company from monitoring voice traffic for potential criminal activity. Likewise, common carrier airlines can not be charged for providing interstate transportation to fleeing felons or even those travelling to a locale in which the passenger intends to commit a crime--this then both relieves AND PROHIBITS such airline service from inquiring WHY a passenger wants to fly from airport A to destination B.Otherwise, the airline which "D.B. Cooper" flew on could have been charged as acting as an accessory to the crime.

Alternatively, we could lobby Congress to have these companies put under the provisions of Common Carrier laws, just like other utility services (commercial electric companies for example) and companies which physically deliver information (FedEx & UPS overnight letter services, and years ago, telegraph services). They are prohibited by the common carrier act from reading your documents and then deciding to deliver or not based on the contents of those documents.

This gets these companies OUT of this message policing business, once and for all.

Dirk Manly wrote:Alternatively, we could lobby Congress to have these companies put under the provisions of Common Carrier laws, just like other utility services (commercial electric companies for example) and companies which physically deliver information (FedEx & UPS overnight letter services, and years ago, telegraph services). They are prohibited by the common carrier act from reading your documents and then deciding to deliver or not based on the contents of those documents.

This gets these companies OUT of this message policing business, once and for all.

Personally, I liked a variation of a comment I found on Reason.

Let them practice Free Association, but if they silence or sensor anyone, they forfeit the subsidies they get from the Federal Government.

This does 2 things - First, if you accept federal monies, you are acting at state discretion and surrender your own First Amendment Rights as a state actor. Second, if they choose to exercise their First Amendment Rights and forfeit the money that makes them way above competition, it opens the door for start ups to take over some of the market share.

Or, we could lobby Congress to have these companies put under Common Carrier laws, just like commercial (I.e. not government-run) electric utilities, phone companies, and other information delivery services such as UPS and FedEx both have overnight letter services.Once again, they are ALL indemnified against criminal charges and liability for, say, providing a murderer the electric power used to electrocute a victim, or, for example, the various powders in letters that were delivered to Congressional offices shortly after the 9/11 attacks.

Regardless of whether these companies ask for common carrier status, or if we convince Congress to do it on Free Speech principles off fostering free and open discussion, once these companies fall under Common Carrier status, it will LITERALLY take a court order for an individual's use of the service to be cut off, provided that the user is up to date on any monthly or storage space and/or bandwidth-based user fees which might be charged according to whatever UNIVERSAL pricing schedule the company charges users of that service.The last part us important, because that prevents someone in the phone company billing department from raising the monthly rate, on, say, a flower shop, because his brother runs a competing flower shop in the same municipality.

Either way is fine with me. Attacking them on receiving Fed money therefore State Actor grounds is probably easier. Only need to convince a judge and/or jury, rather than a majority of the traitorous scum holding office in BOTH houses of Congress.

Binoculars? You don't need bin is to avoid running into, or getting T-boned by a supertanker in broad daylight, especially when you have the speed and nimbleness of a destroyer which has 1/4 the turning radius and 3x the speed of a supertanker.

A throw away temporary e-mail sent out on a one-time basis is probably going to get through so that a message carrying the URL for a new congregating point will probably get through.

Also...Let's not forget IRC (Internet Relay Chat). A channel can be created by anyone at anytime on most IRC networks. Undernet has nodes around the planet. DALnet is strongly supported in the U.S., and there are more.

Alt-Tech proposition:More important than offering new social media options, is easing the process of moving. This could be accomplished by a service that works on two fronts: 1) A backup service that automatically saves your social media content and offers automated tools for re-uploading to other platforms in the event that a sudden move proves necessary.2) Provides a one-stop hub page that aggregates your social media updates and helps your audience follow you across changes of platform.

"I'm no naval expert so perhaps I'm way off but it seems the US navy suddenly forgot how to sail even with all of their fancy system or someone has some fun electronic warfare toys that could make the US navy have a very bad day."

I'm no expert either, but maybe all their fancy toys have done to the art of sailing what texting has done to the written language.

@78 no idea how content or communications is going to be paid for sans advertising

For those who don't know (are there any of those on the VP?) there are 'web conventions' -- stuff folks 'just know' to do without actually knowing they know and do it? For instance, you "automatically" look in the top right corner for the search box. And you click the logo in the top left corner to go to the home page? And you get annoyed when web conventions like that don't work?) In web design, there's a thing called "banner blindness" (they actually named it; that's how real it is!) -- and many, probably most, people now have it.

They've done eye-tracking studies (tracking where viewers' eyes move on screens) and most people's eyes never even brush past the 'sellsellsell' banners (back when they were common; you might notice that many sites now have just a heading/ID banner at the top?) (And now it's the right-hand column of ads-ads-ads.)

(And, it's why Google's adsense is failing -- MOST people don't even SEE the ads at all. Kinda like emails from Nigerian princes; only dumb people fall for it.)

@102 The way to stop them is to file criminal complaints every time they fail to stop their service from being used as part of criminal activity.

Interesting idea, and good you're trying to think of one -- but just WHICH court / police force / lawyer do you think would TAKE that case!? That liberal ass in Hawai'i?! 9th Circuit?

WE cannot rely on courts or police. (We can certainly try to USE them, but we cannot rely on them! Most of them are in our enemy's hands, completely. (c.f. Vox' dad, from how many YEARS ago, right up to "no moslem bans"!)

the daily meme wars and gab make life online so much more fun, gab and the daily memes are the happiest places online; I gab it, brag it!

Great work to everyone and my sincere thanks, LP9

110 alt tech is winning Valerie plume wilson is trying to throw OUR POTUS GE TRUMP off of twitter, the moron woman cannot raise the money, soros wont even help her, grand plan you evil broad, it will yield more support for POTUS TRUMP, twitter to decline as the alt freak left or the cucks or the neocons crying foul, its all great.

I dont care, I'm a 16 pointer old woman.

Post a Comment

Rules of the blogPlease do not comment as "Anonymous". Comments by "Anonymous" will be spammed.